Text Of Buchanan's Speech to
the Republican Convention, on
Aug. 17, 1992:
---
Well, we took the long way home,
but we finally got here.
And I want to congratulate
President Bush, and remove any doubt
about where we stand: The primaries are
over, the heart is strong again, and
the Buchanan Brigades are enlisted -
all the way to a great comeback victory
in November.
Like many of you last month, I
watched that giant masquerade ball at
Madison Square Garden - where 20,000
radicals and liberals came dressed up
as moderates and centrists - in the
greatest single exhibition of
cross-dressing in American political
history.
One by one, the prophets of doom
appeared at the podium.
The Reagan Decade, they moaned, was
a terrible time in America; and the
only way to prevent even worse times,
they said, is to entrust our nation's
fate and future to the party that gave
us McGovern, Mondale, Carter and
Michael Dukakis.
No way, my friends. The American
people are not going to buy back into
the failed liberalism of the 1960s and
'70s - no matter how slick the package
in 1992.
The malcontents of Madison Square
Garden notwithstanding, the 1980s were
not terrible years.
They were great years. You know it.
I know it. And the only people who
don't know it are the carping critics
who sat on the sidelines of history,
jeering at one of the great statesmen
of modern time.
Out of Jimmy Carter's days of
malaise, Ronald Reagan crafted the
longest peacetime recovery in U.S.
history - 3 million new businesses
created, and 20 million new jobs.
Under the Reagan Doctrine, one by
one, the communist dominos began to
fall. First, Grenada was liberated, by
U.S. troops.
Then, the Red Army was run out of
Afghanistan, by U.S. weapons. In
Nicaragua, the Marxist regime was
forced to hold free elections - by
Ronald Reagan's contra army - and the
Communists were thrown out of power.
Have they forgotten?
It was under our party that the
Berlin Wall came down, and Europe was
reunited.
It was under our party that the
Soviet Empire collapsed, and the
captive nations broke free.
It is said that each president will
be recalled by posterity - with but a
single sentence. George Washington was
the father of our country. Abraham
Lincoln preserved the Union. And Ronald
Reagan won the Cold War.
And it is time my old colleagues,
the columnists and commentators,
looking down on us tonight, from their
anchor booths and sky boxes, gave
Ronald Reagan the credit he deserves -
for leading America to victory in the
Cold War.
Most of all, Ronald Reagan made us
proud to be Americans again. We never
felt better about our country; and we
never stood taller in the eyes of the
world.
But, we are here, not only to
celebrate, but to nominate. And an
American president has many, many
roles.
He is our first diplomat, the
architect of American foreign policy.
And which of these two men is more
qualified for that role?
George Bush has been U.N.
ambassador, CIA director, envoy to
China. As vice president, he
co-authored the policies that won the
Cold War.
As president, George Bush presided
over the liberation of Eastern Europe
and the termination of the Warsaw Pact.
And Mr. Clinton? Well, Bill Clinton
couldn't find 150 words to discuss
foreign policy in an acceptance speech
that lasted an hour.
As was said of an earlier
Democratic candidate, Bill Clinton's
foreign policy experience is pretty
much confined to having had breakfast
once at the International House of
Pancakes.
The presidency is also America's
bully pulpit, what Mr. Truman called,
''pre-eminently a place of moral
leadership.''
George Bush is a defender of right
to life, and life-long champion of the
Judeo-Christian values and beliefs upon
which this nation was built.
Mr. Clinton, however, has a
different agenda.
At its top is unrestricted abortion
on demand.
When the Irish-Catholic governor of
Pennsylvania, Robert Casey, asked to
say a few words, on behalf of the 25
million unborn children destroyed since
Roe v. Wade, he was told there was no
place for him at the podium of Bill
Clinton's convention, no room at the
inn.
Yet, a militant leader of the
homosexual rights movement could rise
at that convention and exult: ''Bill
Clinton and Al Gore represent the most
pro-lesbian and pro-gay ticket in
history.'' And so they do.
Bill Clinton supports school choice
- but only for state-run schools.
Parents who send their children to
Christian schools, or Catholic schools,
need not apply.
Elect me, and you get two for the
price of one, Mr. Clinton says of his
lawyer-spouse. And what does Hillary
believe? Well, Hillary believes that
12-year-olds should have a right to sue
their parents, and she has compared
marriage as an institution to slavery -
and life on an Indian reservation.
Well, speak for yourself, Hillary.
Friends, this is radical feminism.
The agenda Clinton & Clinton would
impose on America - abortion on demand,
a litmus test for the Supreme Court,
homosexual rights, discrimination
against religious schools, women in
combat - that's change all right. But
it is not the kind of change America
wants.
It is not the kind of change
America needs. And it is not the kind
of change we can tolerate in a nation
that we still call God's country.
A president is also
commander-in-chief, the man we empower
to send sons and brothers, fathers and
friends, to war.
George Bush was 17 when they bombed
Pearl Harbor. He left his high school
class, walked down to the recruiting
office, and signed up to become the
youngest fighter pilot in the Pacific
War.
And Mr. Clinton? When Bill
Clinton's turn came in Vietnam, he sat
up in a dormitory in Oxford, England,
and figured out how to dodge the draft.
Which of these two men has won the
moral authority to call on Americans to
put their lives at risk? I suggest,
respectfully, it is the patriot and war
hero, Navy Lt.j.g George Herbert Walker
Bush.
My friends, this campaign is about
philosophy, and it is about character;
and George Bush wins on both counts -
going away; and it is time all of us
came home and stood beside him.
As running mate, Mr. Clinton chose
Albert Gore. And just how moderate is
Prince Albert?
Well, according to the Taxpayers
Union, Al Gore beat out Teddy Kennedy,
two straight years, for the title of
biggest spender in the Senate.
And Teddy Kennedy isn't moderate
about anything.
In New York, Mr. Gore made a
startling declaration. Henceforth, he
said, the ''central organizing
principle'' of all governments must be:
the environment. Wrong, Albert!
The central organizing principle of
this republic is freedom. And from the
ancient forests of Oregon, to the
Inland Empire of California, America's
great middle class has got to start
standing up to the environmental
extremists who put insects, rats and
birds - ahead of families, workers and
jobs.
One year ago, my friends, I could
not have dreamt I would be here. I was
then still just one of many panelists
on what President Bush calls, ''those
crazy Sunday talk shows.''
But, I disagreed with the
president; and so we challenged the
president in the Republican primaries,
and fought as best we could.
From February to June, he won 33
primaries. I can't recall exactly how
many we won.
But, tonight, I want to talk to the
3 million Americans who voted for me: I
will never forget you, nor the great
honor you have done me.
But, I do believe, deep in my
heart, that the right place for us to
be now - in this presidential campaign
- is right beside George Bush. This
party is our home, this party is where
we belong. And, don't let anyone tell
you any different.
Yes, we disagreed with President
Bush, but we stand with him for
freedom-of-choice religious schools,
and we stand with him against the
amoral idea that gay and lesbian
couples should have the same standing
in law as married men and women.
We stand with President Bush for
right to life, and for voluntary prayer
in the public schools - and against
putting American women in combat.
And we stand with President Bush in
favor of the right of small towns and
communities to control the raw sewage
of pornography that pollutes our
popular culture.
We stand with President Bush in
favor of federal judges who interpret
the law as written, and against Supreme
Court justices who think they have a
mandate to rewrite our Constitution.
My friends, this election is about
much more than who gets what. It is
about who we are.
It is about what we believe, it is
about what we stand for as Americans.
There is a religious war going on
in our country for the soul of America.
It is a cultural war, as critical to
the kind of nation we will one day be -
as was the Cold War itself.
And in that struggle for the soul
of America, Clinton & Clinton are on
the other side, and George Bush is on
our side.
And, so, we have to come home - and
stand beside him.
My friends, in those six months -
from Concord to California - I came to
know our country better than ever
before in my life, and I collected
memories that will be with me always.
There was that day-long ride
through the great state of Georgia in a
bus Vice President Bush himself had
used in 1988 - a bus they called
Asphalt One.
The ride ended with a 9 p.m.
speech, in front of a magnificent
Southern mansion, in a town called
Fitzgerald.
There was the legal secretary at
the Manchester airport on Christmas
Day, who told me she was going to vote
for me, then broke down crying, saying,
''I've lost my job, I don't have any
money; they're going to take away my
daughter. What am I going to do?''
My friends, even in tough times,
these people are with us. They don't
read Adam Smith or Edmund Burke, but
they came from the same schoolyards and
playgrounds and towns as we did. They
share our beliefs and convictions, our
hopes and our dreams.
They are the conservatives of the
heart. They are our people.
And, we need to reconnect with
them. We need to let them know we know
they're hurting. They don't expect
miracles, but they need to know we
care.
There were the people of Hayfork,
the tiny town high up in California's
Trinity Alps, a town that is now under
a sentence of death, because a federal
judge has set aside 9 million acres for
the habitat of the spotted owl -
forgetting about the habitat of the men
and women who live and work in Hayfork.
And there where the brave live the
family values we treasure, and who
still believe deeply in the American
dream.
Friends, in those wonderful 25
weeks, the saddest days were the days
of the bloody riot in L.A., worst in
our history. But even out of that awful
tragedy can come a message of hope.
Hours after the violence ended I
visited the Army compound in south
L.A., where an officer of the 18th
Cavalry, that had come to rescue the
city, introduced me to two of his
troopers.
They could not have been 20 years
old. He told them to recount there
story.
They had come into Los Angeles late
on the second day; and they walked up a
dark street, where the mob had looted
and burned every building but one, a
convalescent home for the aged.
The mob was heading in, to ransack
and loot the apartments of the
terrified old men and women. When the
troopers arrived, M-16s at the ready,
the mob threatened and cursed, but the
mob retreated.
It had met the one thing that could
stop it: force, rooted in justice,
backed by courage.
Greater love than this hath no man
than that he lay down his life for his
friend.
Here were 19-year-old boys ready to
lay down their lives to stop a mob from
molesting old people they did not even
know.
And, as they took back the streets
of Los Angeles, block by block, so we
must take back our cities, and take
back our culture, and take back our
country.
God bless you, and God bless
America.